Using Nextcloud 30 - search modules become more and more incompatible

chrissi55 · October 18, 2024, 6:28am

I update my Nextcloud for new main releases when the point release is rolled out.

In common a good way to let errors being fixed and enough time for developers of modules e.g. search and files modules to bring their app repos up to date.

Since several main releases this is no longer valid for e.g. the search apps.

First i have “lost” my capability to scan my pdf files with tesseract. (stuck in < NC 27 !!!)

Now i have lost my fulltextsearch_elasticsearch app (stuck in < NC 29 !!)

I know that the apps and the development of the apps lay in the responsibility of each developer / developer team and not nextcloud itself - but when keeping an eye on this development it is the question
in how far does it makes sense to have these apps / modules any longer?

What is the exact disadvantage of using the nextcloud build in search function compared to those modules that seems no longer supported or supported in a way that i loose more and more apps when following the development speed of nextcloud?

Can anyone give an advice what to do with that situation?

Is the build in nextcloud search geting better and makes those “Add-Ons” obsolete more and more?

Anyway installing the elasticsearch beneath nextcloud cost ram and power for the system for not very much benefit at the moment.

Does it make sense to have the fulltext search (core) plus the fulltext search files app (these both are only compatible modules for nc30.x at the moment) without the other modules mentioned above (that are indeed not compatible for now)?

In the admin section the fulltextserach is still a part of but i can change there not much more than tagging the extra search button in the main menue. The drop down for search engine is “dead” because of the missing eleasticsearch connector!

Can i savely remove the tables

oc_fulltextsearch_index
oc_fulltextsearch_indexes
oc_fulltextsearch_ticks

from the nextcloud database without damaging anything?

chrissi55 · October 19, 2024, 2:21pm

I think this wiki of nextcloud is still valid / up2date ?
→ Home · nextcloud/fulltextsearch Wiki · GitHub

If so (i hope so …) you explain that the core app fulltext search is only the basic and …

…
To have it operate, and get content indexed, some other Apps are needed …

it’s not usable without the others!

a3linux · October 19, 2024, 2:29pm

The nextcloud fulltextsearch_elasticsearch app is not compatible with Nextcloud 30.0.1. The full text search with ElasticSearch stop working and the WARN message in the logging,
“FullTextSearchPlatform OCA\FullTextSearch_Elasticsearch\Platform\ElasticSearchPlatform is not available”

The App Full text search - Elasticsearch Platform is still at Nextcloud 29.0.1 stable channel.

I am not sure if the team need any help to upgrade the App.

awelzel · October 20, 2024, 5:21pm

I stopped using fulltext search with Nextcloud 29 since the backend was already a pain to use after Nextcloud 28. The Elastic Search module produced many errors in the log when building the index and it did not work at all in the beginning.

I don’t know the status of this project. In Github there are a number of open pull requests, some more than 6 months old. But as it is now, one can not rely on this feature any longer.

Is there a better solution for paying customers?

rakekniven · October 20, 2024, 5:32pm

The sellers should be able to answer these questions.

awelzel · October 20, 2024, 5:40pm

Warning: always make sure, you have a backup before you modifying the database!

You should never remove application tables only, without also cleaning up the database migration status. Because the migration status will tell Nextcloud if an app needs to add or update tables or not.

All database migration steps are registered in oc_migration where app is the ID of the app. So if you want to remove the oc_fulltextsearch_ tables, you must also delete the records from oc_migration which refere to this app, otherwise you can not install it again if it may get supported for Nextcloud 30 or newer again.

One way to clean up may be:

drop table if exists oc_fulltextsearch_index;
drop table if exists oc_fulltextsearch_ticks;
delete from oc_migration where app="fulltextsearch";

a3linux · October 20, 2024, 10:43pm

What is the alternative full text search from NC 29 on? Thanks.

awelzel · October 20, 2024, 10:56pm

I don’t know of any alternative.

However in Github one can see, that there is at least a branch of the Elastic Search provider for Nextcloud 30:

But I don’t know when this will be published, propably there are still things to do.

chrissi55 · October 21, 2024, 5:12am

Thanks a lot! Yes i always made and make backups of my cloud db.
Building nightly dump files of my db is a cron job and i get mail each morning about success or failures - so should be save in that point.

So in the final i can uninstall the elasticsearch package as well via apt remove --purge elsticsearch.

nomad · October 21, 2024, 7:29am

With Nextcloud AIO 30.0.1 the fulltext search is working fine

awelzel · October 22, 2024, 5:51pm

Yes, the Elastic Search backend just got an update to support NC 30. So it’s time to give it a try again.

mlsxlist · October 23, 2024, 3:13am

For me elastic full text search is working fine with Nextcloud 29.0.8. just tested with a scanned document I uploaded some days ago.

rakekniven · October 23, 2024, 5:51pm

The topic was about Nextcloud 30.

chrissi55 · October 24, 2024, 4:44am

Although the update of the fulltextsearch_elasticsearch module has reached the level of NC30 there seems to be open questions like this one

github.com/nextcloud/fulltextsearch_elasticsearch

Compatibility of fulltextsearch_elasticsearch module with Nextcloud 30 and versions of OpenSearch/Elasticsearch

opened 10:34AM - 08 Aug 24 UTC

rr10

Hi team, I am trying to configure the fulltextsearch_elasticsearch module for… Nextcloud version 30. However, I am having difficulty determining which versions of OpenSearch or Elasticsearch are compatible. The documentation only mentions Elasticsearch version 8.6.1. Can you confirm if Elasticsearch version 8.6.1 is the only supported version? Are there other versions of Elasticsearch or OpenSearch that are compatible with Nextcloud 30? Could you provide a specific requirements page or an official reference for the compatibility of the fulltextsearch_elasticsearch module with Nextcloud 30? Proposal: It would be very helpful to add a section to the [fulltextsearch_elasticsearch repository wiki](https://github.com/nextcloud/fulltextsearch_elasticsearch/wiki) that lists the compatibility of OpenSearch and Elasticsearch versions for each Nextcloud version. This would greatly help users to quickly and efficiently find the necessary information. Is there documentation available for the following commands? files_fulltextsearch:configure fulltextsearch:check fulltextsearch:collection:delete fulltextsearch:collection:init fulltextsearch:collection:list fulltextsearch:configure fulltextsearch:document:index fulltextsearch:document:platform fulltextsearch:document:provider fulltextsearch:document:status fulltextsearch:index fulltextsearch:live fulltextsearch:migration:24 fulltextsearch:reset fulltextsearch:search fulltextsearch:stop fulltextsearch:test fulltextsearch_elasticsearch:configure Thank you for your help!

And an update for the tesseract part is also an open question …
So tutorials like this one can not be used by NC30 + users at the moment

For the moment i am searching for information if tesseract is maybe obsolete because one of the NC30 comaptible fulltextsearch modules can assume this “job” meanwhile??

rakekniven · October 28, 2024, 7:00am

This topic was automatically closed after 4 days. New replies are no longer allowed.